Absolutely, Mr. Speaker.
When I went across the country I happened to go to Nanaimo, which is in the member's riding. I remember very well a story I was told about a woman who had worked for about four or five years and because of the cuts made by the Liberal Party at that time, people needed 700 hours in order to claim EI if they were sick. This woman fell into a coma and had to go to hospital. She recovered and applied for employment insurance. Believe me, I saw the tears in that woman's eyes when she told me she had 698 hours. She was missing two hours to qualify for employment insurance. She could not make the payment on her house. It was a real shame. The cuts that the Liberal Party made at that time were totally unacceptable.
Women are the ones who have suffered the most from all the cuts. Only 32% of women qualify for employment insurance. They are the ones who have been hit the most with all the cuts and changes that have been made over many years.
The government said that workers depend on employment insurance. It is not that. The government depends on the employment insurance fund. It has made a big profit from it. There was an overflow of $57 billion that it put into the general revenue fund and said, “Never mind the working men and women of our country. We are going to steal that money, put it into the general revenue fund and say that we are good administrators with the money of our country”. The deficit was paid on the backs of the working people of our country.